Super Bowl Matchup – New York Jets vs. Minnesota Vikings

The New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings have created a Super Bowl made for the history books.

Before the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, the Jets and Vikings enabled that seminal event to occur. When the AFL’s Jets won Super Bowl III and the NFL’s Vikings then lost Super Bowl IV to the Kansas City Chiefs, the upstart AFL gained enough leverage to merge with its unfriendly neighbor. But that piece of the past is hardly in the forefront as Super Bowl XLIV comes into focus.

The much more fascinating element of this contest is that it pits a young, New York Jet quarterback – Mark Sanchez – against an opponent from the old NFL with an aged but still impressive quarterback named Brett Favre. It all feels a lot like the game that put the Super Bowl on the map as an American sports centerpiece.

The first two Super Bowls were actually called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. It was only in January of 1969 that the pregame hype identified pro football’s biggest contest as “Super Bowl III,” the fabled collision between Joe Namath’s Jets and the Baltimore Colts. Yes, Earl Morrall was the starting quarterback for Baltimore in that long-ago game, but it was Johnny Unitas – the old master – who came off the bench and scored the Colts’ only touchdown in a 16-7 loss that changed pro football forever. “Johnny U” won acclaim for his own performance in the now-extinct Orange Bowl stadium, but it was “Broadway Joe” who left an indelible imprint on the American public. By making good on a guarantee of a Jets win, despite the fact that Baltimore was favored by 18 points, Namath became the living embodiment of a man bold enough to talk tough, and big enough to back up his talk on the field.

It’s been 41 years since Namath and Unitas – two towering legends – shared the stage in Miami, so it’s amazing that Sanchez and Favre will inherit the Super Sunday spotlight in the very same city. The stadium will be different, but the reality of two men – young and old; sex symbol and grizzled veteran; rising star and proven Hall of Famer – will overshadow the rest of Super Bowl XLIV. The fact that Favre will be playing against the Jets, the same team that never got along with him during a contentious 2008 season, will only add to the aura surrounding this truly super showdown.

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